Congress tries to reach out to Nitish
Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Vice-President Rahul Gandhi have moved in the past two days to reach out to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. This comes at a time questions are being asked about the longevity of the ‘grand alliance’ in Bihar and Kumar has come for criticism from Congress leaders.
Sonia Gandhi telephoned Kumar on Wednesday morning and thanked him for his Janata Dal(United)’s support to the Opposition’s common candidate for the country’s vice-presidential (VP) poll. Kumar heads the JD(U).
According to JD(U) sources, Rahul Gandhi phoned Kumar on Tuesday evening, after the meeting of the 18 Opposition parties that decided to field Gopalkrishna Gandhi as their VP candidate.
The Congress VP also suggested to Kumar that they meet. The latter will be in Delhi on July 22 and 23, to attend his party’s national executive meeting, and is likely to meet Opposition leaders.
In Delhi, both Congress and JD leaders tried to dismiss speculation that the JDRashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) alliance in Bihar was on the brink. Kumar and his party had asked Prasad’s son and state deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav to reply satisfactorily on the corruption charges against him.
In Patna, Tejashwi dubbed the corruption case against him registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation as “political vendetta”. The JD(U) said it “expects more” from the young RJD scion. “I didn’t even have a moustache in 2004. How can a 13-14 yearsold kid do all this? The CBI FIR is fake and part of a political vendetta,” said Tejashwi.